Unofficial Online Culture in Large Undergraduate Courses

Jennifer Hodges, Michigan State University ASHE Conference 2004 [email protected]

Research Questions

 What are the characteristics of the college student conversations that occur on an unofficial, unmonitored online discussion board focused on an academic course at a large Midwestern institution?

 What impact does the availability of an unofficial, unmonitored online discussion board have on the cheating culture in an academic course at a large Midwestern institution?  How do students perceive the conversations that occur in an unofficial, unmonitored online discussion board focused on an academic course at a large Midwestern institution?

The Unofficial Online Environment

    Created in 1997 by an alum of a large Midwestern institution and focused specifically on that institution (originally focused on CAPA – computer assisted personalized approach http://www.lon-capa.org/ ) Boasts over 50,000 registered student members Includes academic forums (related to specific courses), professor ratings, a dating service, classifieds, and an e-zine Requires that members verify that they are not a faculty or staff member of the large Midwestern institution

The Courses

  Introductory Accounting  About 800 students per semester (2 sections)    147 message threads, 673 posts, 167 login IDs Official online environment was a detailed course website constructed by the professor Postings focused predominantly on three large projects Introductory Chemistry     About 1000 students per semester (3 sections) About 600 message threads Official online environment was the Lon-CAPA system and a course webpage Postings focused on weekly homework problems

Characteristics of the 147 Accounting Message Threads (MT)

        102 conversations (69%) included more than one participant   Range of 2 to 84 posts per MT, average of 4.6 per MT Range of 2 to 35 participants per MT, average of 3.2 per MT 139 (95%) were directly course related 30 (20%) used please and/or thank you 28 (19%) contained swearing (8 of which were personal attacks aimed at a particular participant) 9 (6%) mentioned forming a study group 6 (4%) mentioned using the help room 20 (14%) included contact info such as email address or phone # 60 of the 167 (36%) participants used their student ID as a login

Institutional Assumptions about the Cheating Culture in Undergraduate Courses

 Faculty and Administrators believed that the primary reason students visited the unofficial site was to cheat   “As long as websites like [site address] exist, it does not make sense to raise the weight given to homework; we would be rewarding the people who do not take the effort to do the problems by themselves.” (departmental website) “[Large Midwestern institution] faculty and staff say they are wising up and cracking down on those who use a popular student Web site to access everything from test answers to entire essays.”, “…they have been catching cheaters in the act.” , “[Large Midwestern institution] faculty are now taking action against students who use those features.” (

Student newspaper

September 2, 2004)

Is cheating rampant on the unofficial site?

 Postings on the site which dealt directly with course content can be put into three categories:   

“Help Room” postings

– These posting were discussions of problems that you might hear in a study group or help room. The participants didn’t ask for answers but asked for explanations of the process, typically after explaining what they’d already attempted. (62% of Accounting postings)

“Double Check” postings

Accounting postings) – These postings were typically one person asking for the answers with a clarification that they’d already completed their own work and now wanted to double check that they’d completed it correctly. (21% of

“Cheating” postings

– These were simply requests for answers with no explanations or postings of answers with no explanations. (17% of Accounting postings)

The Focus Groups

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Part one – Impact of online learning environments Part two – Sample postings Student Demographics

  10 females, 7 males 8 STEM, 9 Non-STEM 5 sophomores, 5 juniors, 7 seniors

Themes

  Views about online environments in general Usage of the unofficial environment     Role of the Professor Role of the Course - context and content Role of the Student in the Learning Process Cultural Norms of the unofficial environment

Views about Online Environments

  The majority had positive views “I’m really in favor of online websites for classes just because as college students we all have access to the internet and it’s a nice way of keeping track of notes and seeing assignments, or even your grades that you’ve received for assignments, because you may lose a paper but it will always be online for the duration of that class.” A few had less favorable views “I sit at my computer enough. I don’t want my professor to say oh I’m not going to tell you the assignment in class right now, you have to go home and get on Angel and see what I say when I could have just told you in class. I hate that it’s becoming so impersonal that I can’t contact my professor, so I’ll come up to talk to him after class, and they say no just email me, I won’t take that note I’m sorry.”

Usage of the Unofficial Environment

   Proudly proclaimed participation “By and large when it concerns homework, I will usually go straight to [the site]. I don’t have time to do the homework so I’ll just go and copy it down and do whatever.” Embarrassed to admit participation “I admit to going on there for some of my classes, but usually I’ve gone there like if I’ve felt like I’ve exhausted my other resources for getting help and I actually have found that in many ways more useful than some of the discussion boards.” Defending participation as not cheating “I know I used the word cheating but I still, this might sound kind of lame, but I still don’t necessarily consider it cheating because when I go on and look at the forum, I’m trying to find an explanation of this equation or how you solve this problem and once I see it, then I usually say oh and then I understand how to do it.”

Role of the Professor

   Quality teaching could curtail online cheating “I’d say that the professor’s responsibility is to teach the material thoroughly and if there’s a lot of kids going to use [the site] to get the answers because the professor didn’t teach it properly or thoroughly enough for the students to understand it, then yes it is the professor’s responsibility.” Online interaction impacts participation in unofficial environments “I think that his spending the time to do that (interact with the students online) really encouraged people to use maybe methods that he wanted us to use instead of just you know going to [the site].” Professors have a responsibility to know what’s going on “But the thing that comes into mind is that they’ve got to know it’s going on. And I have to question how effective do they think their homework assignments are if they know this is going on.”

Role of the Course

   Value placed on the course content “Do chem majors cheat in chemistry class if that’s what they want to do for the rest of their life? Me personally, if I know I need to learn that for medical school or whatever, I can’t afford to cheat, it’s going to come back to get me, so I won’t. I’ll take the time to study and learn it.” Impact of class size “Or even, I know it’s a radical idea, to cut class size. In a 250 person course, the opportunity or the impulse to ask questions during lecture gets a lot easier when you’re in a smaller class size, not a 250 person class size. Differences in course subject “Probably there’s more chatter on science courses because in some non science courses it’s fairly easy to go into a book and look up the answer, while in the science course it’s an application of a problem that you might have to derive.”

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Role of the Student

Recognition that there’s a trade off “You always have the people who just post all their answers or who ask for all the answers and they never do it for themselves. I’m not complaining about it because it’s just going to hurt them in the long run.” Cheat now, Learn later?

“You just post your answers and then like they’re so close you can go and compare what you have and kind of decipher it. It’s like a process of elimination. It’s not doing the problem and it’s not beneficial for student learning.” “Yeah, that’s not right. But that should be somebody’s choice. If you’re stressed out about it and just want to get done, then fine. But me, I’ll go back and make sure I know it.” Benefits of Unofficial Participation “Sometimes it helps you if you spent a long time trying to figure out the equation then you go online and write up an explanation. It kind of cements it in your mind.”

Cultural Norms Unofficial Online Environment

   Rule 1 – Be polite “Usually people are polite. You do say please and thank you. It’s one of the only places where I see people using please and thank you. I would assume it’s because you want the answer. You want help and there’s really no compunction to help in an online situation. There’s no face to see, you don’t see the person.” Rule 2 – Expectation of Reciprocity “I know when I’m completely lost on a question I go to [the site] and usually someone will explain something in a way and a light bulb goes off and I understand it. And so when there’s a question that people seem to be having trouble with and I understand it, I want to go on and put up a post that will hopefully do the same thing for somebody else, because if nobody puts up posts then it won’t work, you’ve got to give and take.

Rule 3 – If someone breaks rule 2, you can ignore rule 1 “I think people are a little bit more bold because its anonymous and you don’t necessarily know who you’re talking to.”